One of the milestone American movies of the 1990s, Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential riffed on film noir and 1950s cop movies to create a sprawling epic about corruption in Los Angeles. As it turns 20, we round up five films that helped inspire it.

Breaking Hollywood’s on-screen Aids taboo was not the only thing on Jonathan Demme’s mind after the success of The Silence of the Lambs. Amy Taubin looks at the representational coups smuggled into his odd-couple legal drama.

From the Roger Corman pumphouse to The Silence of the Lambs’s Oscar triumph, Stop Making Sense’s concert-doc ingenuity to portraits of social-justice fighters, Jonathan Demme left a legacy of richly independent movies celebrating life’s underdogs, writes David Thompson.

Jonathan Demme’s remake of conspiracy classic The Manchurian Candidate substitutes the first Gulf War for Korea and spoofs the toothlessness of US news media in the face of corporate profiteering. He talks to David Thompson about the politics of thrillers.